THE VISIBLE MAN

I have a handful of collecting books I bought in the 90's/ early 00's that I have never stopped reading really.

One of them is Classic Plastic by Rick Polizzi, who is more well known perhaps as a board games guru and author of Spin Again.

Classic Plastic is a glossy colour softback stuffed with hundreds of pictures of every American model kit from the beginning of kits to modern stuff. Aurora, Monogram, Lindberg, the lot.

I was flicking its sumptuous leaves the other day and read again the chapter about scientific model kits: the human skin, the human eye, the skeleton and the heart to name a few.

And then there's also the Visible Man, which I always found a neat twist on the more familiar Invisible Man.

The Visible Man is what it says, a kit of a man with all his guts visible. Its an impressive thing in the book, alongside his see-through stablemates the Visible Horse and the Visible Pigeon! It was kit masters Renwal who brought their entrails to the masses.

Well, as is only possible in real life, I accidentally came face to face with the Visible Man just this week! 

Having stared at him for 18 years in Rick's book I recognised his innards straight away! He was in a science lab display cupboard and I must say he cut a fine figure of a man behind the glass. He's tall too, at least 18 inches if I remember rightly. 

I only ever had the Airfix skeleton kit as a kid, which I adored, but the Visible Man would have made a gutsy addition to my monster model shelf!

Have you any scientific model kits readers?